A
60 minute illustrated lecture presented to international SF conferences
in London and Glasgow and to high school art and literature students:
Choosing illustrations that range from art history, science fiction art
and films, to her own drawings of premature and hydrocephalic infants,
Spears challenges the audience to ask, "What is alien? What is it
that makes us afraid?"

"Engrossing
and sometimes spooky. With this image (of the unborn) in mind, she describes
ET and his ilk as 'the foetal alien.'" The Whig-Standard

"For Spears, an award-winning Canadian poet, artist and science-fiction
novelist, the beautiful and the frightening are often inseparable.
And their most powerful presence emanates from the face, no matter how
wild its changes, distortions, displacements or disfigurations."
Kingston Record